That's what DGIndex is telling me of the FullMetal Alchemist DVD I ripped. I thought 4:3 and 16:9 would be one of the choices for Aspect Ratio, and 1:1 is used to name a PAR (I don't know what the [1] part means)...???

It's Progressive frame NTSC as well.....and when I follow the steps in the guide until making AviSynth scripts, none of them seem to change the quality of the picture, not even when it's changed to 23.976 fps, but anyway.....aaaah o__o

Well, this looks like a very official DVD, cover and DVD alike, and inserts....then again, I'm suddenly not sure if the original FullMetal Alchemist anime ever came out in individual DVDs or just in box sets (and the quality of the imagry on the outside and actual anime could be a tad bit better...)....and I did get it at a Japanese used bookstore for $5, so.....T_T I guess there's no cheap way to get real anime.What are the red flags?

Well, to return to this subject (finally, but unfortunately), I tried ripping a different DVD as well - the first disc of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya complete series set, which I am pretty sure is not a bootleg. And the same odd settings occured on DGIndex. I also tried a different (newer?) version of DGIndex mirksop linked me with, same results. ???

Wow, really? Well, Haruhi is 16:9, so see if stretching to widescreen comes out correct, but otherwise, it does still sound suspicious. Just to make sure, you're american, correct? The DVDs should be by Bandai, otherwise something is definitely wrong.

Ok...I widened the video to 16:9 in AvsPmod, and it stretched but there are still these thick black borders on the sides. Is that normal? Also, I tried going frame by frame through the video, without having edited it at all, and it didn't appear to be interlaced, actually. But it still doesn't look quite right, unless I'm mistaken. Here's a screenshot after I used the Spline36Resize to 16:9 (the top and bottom borders are just from VirtualDub):

Oh, yes, I'm an American. And the Haruhi Suzumiya DVDs are from Bandai - I bought them at this store http://www.animejungle.net/user/scripts/user/category.php . On that note I re-bought the FullMetal Alchemist DVDs from the Anime Corner Store (online), where they make a big point of not purchasing or selling bootlegs (doesnt look like the DVDs I bought are either). Thank you for reading all this and helpiing, by the way ^^u

Episode 0 of Haruhi actually IS pillarboxed due to what it is. If you check the next episodes (or even the end of episode 0) you'll see it won't have the pillarbox anymore. However you likely did something wrong with the deinterlacing and resizing regardless, as that slight letterbox shouldn't be there, nor should you have traces of combing (the jaggies there are quite noticeable).IIRC Haruhi is a VFR show, so you should be doing ivtc on most of it but will likely have to do normal deinterlace if not bobbing on some pans and stuff.As far as resizing goes, it seems like you did something close to resizing to 2.35:1 and the letterboxing to 16:9 or something along the lines.Either way, as far as buying DVDs on online stores goes, the only ones I know to be surely reliable are amazon and rightstuf, the latter especially tends to have many good anime discounts. Never heard of animejungle so I wouldn't know if it could be selling bootlegs or not, but if the DVDs are the Bandai ones then it could mean the bandai DVDs were authored incorrectly or something, though that sounds strange.

Somewhat related, if you're very worried about the pillarboxing you can do what I do and crop it all off, then manually re-add it with avisynth or something for correct AR and nicer blacks.

Also, the info that DG* or even DVD2AVI returns isn't exactly reliable. The frame composition or resolution is mostly based on flags in the stream, so it isn't always going to be correct or even close. It also genuinely gets it wrong sometimes even when the flags are there as they should be. Little to no DVDs at least should do that though.

Thank you all for your help.Well, I'm quite stunned, but I suppose I shouldn't really be. As another test I just gave in and installed DVDFab, and now I'm following the Read ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides Lovingly Overhauled Largely by Zarxrax guide and no such abnormal problems have occurred.When I was first getting into AMV-making (know so little about it its ridiculous), I was looking for a good DVD ripper, and my dad ended up spending quite a bit on one, like $50. So I wanted to utilize that one if I could, just so I wouldn't feel like the money went to waste. But that ripper seems to be the source of these odd problems, when I look at all the options. Reading the description for 3:2 pulldown telecine, it seemed like that's what something in my computer was doing when all that "Aspect Ratio: 1:1, etc..." nonsense, and horrid picture quality was produced (and nothing I did to edit the picture really worked).

This is from the video ripped by DVDFab, with the only changes being Force Film and resizing. (There's still probably some cleaning to do but I'm just happy it came out so much better quality ^^)